Studio Legends: Keith Olsen

With over 200 album-engineering and/or production
credits to his name—and 39 of them have been
certified gold, 24 went platinum, and 14 went multiplatinum—it’s no stretch to say Keith Olsen has helped
define the sound of modern music. On top of that, he’s
won six Grammy awards, sold more than 110 million
records, become a trustee of the National Academy
of Recording Arts and Sciences (the Grammy people),
designed music gear, written books, and worked as a
recording and touring musician.

Born in South Dakota and raised in the Minneapolis
area, Olsen started his career as a musician but before
long was hired as an independent staff producer for
music-industry mogul Clive Davis (who, among others,
was responsible for signing acts as huge as Janis
Joplin, Bruce Springsteen, Aerosmith, Pink Floyd,
and Earth, Wind & Fire). Olsen went on to become a
major force in recorded music in the 1970s, ’80s, and
’90s, recording with everyone from Fleetwood Mac
to Foreigner, Whitesnake, Pat Benatar, Joe Walsh,
Santana, the Grateful Dead, and Ozzy Osbourne. He
also achieved incredible success in the film world, producing
soundtracks for the hits Footloose, Top Gun,
Flashdance, and Tron.

What’s your background as a musician—you’re primarily a
bassist, right?
I was actually a cellist. I was a bad acoustic guitar player, a bad
piano player, a bad bass player … anything I could get my hands
on that I could play and learn a little bit about. But I knew that I
liked music. I liked the theoretical aspects of it.

Did you have formal training?
Yes, kind of. I took private lessons from this guy who was just a
stunningly good concert pianist who taught me a lot about theory
and had me really going into the classics as a place to draw from.
Then I became a music-ed major at the University of Minnesota,
but I got drawn by the road—“C’mon, go out and play!”

While you were playing in folk bands, you rubbed elbows with
people who went on to big things—for example, sharing bills
with future members of the Mamas & the Papas and the Lovin’
Spoonful—and then you switched over to a rock band called the
Music Machine. How did you end up moving into the production
side of things?
While I was in the Music Machine, I kept finding these bands that
were opening for us. I found this band called Eternity’s Children
and we recorded their stuff. I was the producer and arranger and
engineer. We had a hit called “Mrs. Bluebird.”

How did you meet your future producing partner Curt
Boettcher and connect with Clive Davis?
I met Curt back at the University of Minnesota. He told me, “Hey
I got this deal with this guy and I can go into the studio anytime
I want.” My eyes lit up and I said, “Hey, why don’t we do stuff
together?” So we went in and worked on “Along Comes Mary” and
“Cherish” [with folk-rock band the Association], and we worked
with Tommy Roe on “Sweet Pea” and
“Hoorah for Hazel” [which became Top 40
hits in 1968].

Then Clive started hearing all this stuff
by these two kids that were doing things differently,
twisting knobs. A lot of record producers
back then were “stopwatchers” and
budget minders, period. Clive was interested
in people who wanted to push the envelope.
We met with him and he said, “I want you
to be my independent staff producers,”
because if we kept our independent status
we could go to other studios. We weren’t
tied into the CBS union contract that the
studios had with the IBEW [International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers].

We did the Millennium album [1968’s
Begin]—the first 16-track recording ever.
We had to figure out how to lock two
8-track tape machines together to do it. It
was kind of a turntable hit. Jerry Wexler
from Atlantic gave me a shot at mixing
a record with Aretha Franklin—her live
album that was recorded out at a church
in Watts. From there I got work with Mac
Rebennack—Dr. John—and then started
doing other things.

How did you find Lindsey Buckingham
and Stevie Nicks?
They were in a band and their booking agent
called all the A-list producers, and none of
them wanted to go to San Jose to see this
band named Fritz. He called the B-list producers.
He called the C-list guys. Then he
called the D-list guys, which was me and a
couple of other guys, and I said, “A free trip
to San Jose? Sure! I’ll go up and see them.”

I was picked up by Lindsey and their
drummer in a van that had no seats in it.
I sat in the back with the drum kit and
the amps. When we got out of the van, he
turned to me and said, “Well, help us set
up!” [Laughs.] It was Lindsey and Stevie
singing, and Lindsey was the bass player.
The next weekend, I got them in the studio
to cut a demo and I realized all the [other]
members of the band were just average and
Lindsey and Stevie were so special. So I
said, “Let’s try to do a duo.” And they said,
“No, no, no, we want to be a band, we
want to be a band.”

Then Lindsey got mononucleosis and
Fritz broke up because he was flat on his
back for three or four months. So he started
playing acoustic guitar, but he didn’t have
enough energy to strum it. He could only
lay his arm on it and do that flamenco kind
of shot. Now think about the style that
Lindsey plays—that’s how it happened.

Keith Olsen with Ozzy Osbourne at Goodnight L.A. Studios in Los Angeles during the cutting of No Rest for the Wicked. Photo courtesy Keith Olsen

How did that lead to Lindsey joining
Fleetwood Mac?
I had signed on to co-produce with
Fleetwood Mac and engineer their album
after Bare Trees. How I made the deal to
do it was I played [Mick Fleetwood] three
tracks of the finished Buckingham-Nicks
record, one off an Emitt Rhodes record,
and one thing from Aretha Franklin. He
said, “Wow, this is really great.” So we
made a deal to do it. Then I got a call on
New Year’s Eve, and Mick says, “I’ve had
some bad news. Bob Welch just decided
to leave the band. So, that fellow in that
band you played me—would you see if
that guy would like to join my band?” And
I said, “Well, they’re going to come as a
set. Because they’re very much into their
own thing, and the only chance of getting
them to drop that would be to bring them
both on.” And he says, “Well, maybe that
will work. Can you see if you can convince
them to join my band?”

So I drop what I was going to do on
that New Year’s Eve, take my date, and we
drive over to Stevie and Lindsey’s house.
I said, “Hey, Happy New Year” and all of
this—I brought over the obligatory bottle
of bad champagne—and I said, “Can we
talk? Mick Fleetwood would like you to
join Fleetwood Mac.” Immediately, Lindsey
said, “Oh, no, no—I couldn’t possibly play
anything as good as Peter Green did. How
am I supposed to get up there and play
‘The Green Manalishi’?” Finally I get them,
by the end of the night, to try it on a trial
basis for eight weeks.

They started rehearsing with Mick and
John and Christine [McVie], and they
found they had a really neat sound together.
Then when we got into the studio, it was
totally unique. It was not like Bare Trees—it
was not like anything else Fleetwood Mac
had done. In fact, John came up to me
and said, “Keith, you know, we used to
be a blues band.” [I said,] “Yeah, I know,
John. But it’s a lot shorter drive down to
this bank.” [Laughs.] Because he knew we
were commercial. But it was unique—it was
the right thing—and halfway through that
album, we knew. We knew.

Let’s talk about your approach to
recording guitar.
Get a great guitar player, get a great-sounding
amp, turn it up. [Laughs.] If
you’re recording electric guitar, find that
point on one of the speakers where you get
the highest frequency, and place the mic
there. [See the sidebar “Olsen’s ‘Shavering’
Cab-Mic’ing Technique” on p.148 for
more on this.] I was doing a seminar once
with guys from Shure, and I said, “Okay,
put the mic where you think it should
go on that 4x12 out there.” Then I had
the guy play guitar. I said, “Okay, play
a riff. You got the riff? Record it. Okay,
now, don’t change anything. Just unplug
your guitar from the amp.” I walked out
in the room with headphones on and just
moved the mic about an inch and a half
by listening to the hiss coming back as
the mic moved from the edge of the cone
[whistles an ascending pitch], right around
where the edge of the voice coil was. Then
I moved it around the voice coil and I
heard it change to the highest hiss. I just
put a little X on that speaker and I put the
’57 right there. Then I said, “Don’t change
any settings anywhere, inside or outside.
Now just plug in and play the same riff.”
He played the same riff and we went back
to back, A to B, and I’ve never seen so
many mouths drop open at the same time
like that.

Mitch Gallagher's latest book is Guitar Tone: Pursuing the Ultimate Guitar Sound. He is the former Editor in Chief of EQ magazine. In addition to being a writer, he is a freelance recording engineer/producer/mastering engineer, teaches music business and audio recording at Indiana University/Purdue University, and is Sweetwater’s Editorial Director. mitchgallagher.com.

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